Safe Arrival...and Enjoying the Stay!

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I arrived safely in Tanzania, luggage intact and sleep-deprived after 3 flights for a total of 18 hours in the air plus 12 hours of airport layover time. (Excellent flights though with naps, on-demand movies and an incredible view of the expanse of the eastern Sahara Desert.) I am now staying with the group at the Training Center for Development Cooperation outside Arusha (here's where you pull out that atlas or being lazy and typing "Arusha, Tanzania" in Google maps works too...).

Our mode of transportation to and from the Center & the scenery in the area.

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We have done a lot already in our two full days here. The first morning we had an intro to the center before heading to a nearby lake for our first Kiswahili lesson. The first of many over the next five months as we hopefully progress from greetings and introducing ourselves. Of course, if you do proper greetings that gets you pretty far as culturally, Tanzanians are very polite people and at offices and such many will not give you information if not properly greeted first. As our teacher here put it, "here we believe that human beings are more important than work."

Anyhow, yesterday we also went to three markets where we saw everything from tourist crafts to live chickens for sale. One was in ‘downtown’ Arusha and the others nearby [outskirts of last - and busiest -market we went to]. All full of people and color, mud and movement. Lots of people wanting to be your friend in order to be genuinely friendly or to make a sale, depending. Or they are looking for an American girlfriend. I am quickly inventing a fake American boyfriend to describe to any overly-friendly salesman in the future.

Today we had more lectures on interesting cultural and history topics about the country before we headed over to a local coffee farm where we saw the entire process of coffee bean from plant to cup. We hand-picked, hand separated, hand-pound and hand-roasted the coffee beans. Quite interesting - and delicious. Riding everywhere is a lot of fun too as there are 14 of us (including the driver) in a not-too-large Land Cruiser [picture above]. Even with its 4WD we didn't quite make it up a very muddy hill this morning which was exciting, but we backed back down and found another less steep but still rather bumpy route to take to the farm.

The farmer, Hamidu Mussa, separates the ground coffee into the parts ready to boil and those that need to be pounded more. Ripe and unripe coffee beans. The hand-cranked machine separating the fleshy outside from the hard bean inside.

Which brings me to the surprise of actual cool weather - rain both nights which has been fun to listen to as I fall asleep both nights and clouds all day. Most everyone else is complaining they are cold, but I will look back on this with envy I know in a couple months when it is 40 C with 100% humidity. Yuck.

This is already quite long, but we've seen a lot in the past 48 hours. So before I get on discussions about roads and driving, photography etiquette, Tanzanian history or special greeting rules, I'll sign off for now. Greetings to all of you and Kwaherini until later!